Daily Archives: September 20, 2010

Saturday night was the next race night at Austin’s Del Valle MX Park. I had been traveling most of the summer and now was home for a bit and had a chance to attend Saturday’s race and photograph it. I met up with my good friend…Evan Gearing (Evan’s Expo Blog) and we were up for a tough challenge! The odds were stacked against us photographically – Practice at 6 PM Races start at 7 PM (night shooting?) and overcast (low light conditions)…whew! I took about 800 photos and about 200 were good. I started out on Aperture mode & f/4. As the light early was not bad, my settings were no problem. Later on, as it became darker, it became tougher! I was trying Manual, different f/stops….but my original settings seemed to be the best. As the sun was fading…my shots were falling off like a bug on a zapper! I took out my Nikon SB 600 flash and hoped I would blind the poor racers!

I played around with it for a while on different settings until finally I was getting the right amount of light. Any racer that came close to me was a bit bright, but thats ok…it was a learning experience!! As soon as I got it down….Evan had a great idea to move over to the corner bank that had the sunset in the background. I had no idea how the shots would look. After a few snaps…I was hooked!! Super great call Evan!! We stayed at this location until it became dark. Our shots were losing out as darkness fell…the the backgrounds were non existent….a bit too black. So we packed it up around 8:15 PM.

You can find my gallery of the session here….Talke Photography. The shot is a bit noisy and a tad off, but still cool! I’d like to try it again. I think next time in such conditions…I’ll use the flash 100% of the time.